Monday, May 29, 2006

Here are a few interesting links that I've come across in the last few days:

A story from ABC about Chinese Muslims wrongly imprisoned in Guantanamo and then finally released after 4.5 years. They couldn't be sent to China since the government there persecutes Uighurs, and despite being found innocent of any charges (NLEC, or No Longer Enemy Combattant, in Guantanamo Bay terminology - Mr Kafka could not have made this up if he had tried), being put away by the Americans for 4.5 years is enough to garner a bad reputation. So apparently, no country would take them, the US included, with the single and solitary exception of Albania:

We are very pleased that the Albanian government and the Albanian people opened their hearts and welcomed us. Despite the fact that all the strong, powerful, democratic countries are able and capable of accepting us, they did not do that. We are having some problems ... there are no Uighurs in Albania, and we don't speak the Albanian language. ...

Were hoping that the United States government would recognize the mistake that it has done and accept, allow us to enter the United States. U.S. government captured us, U.S. government incarcerated us, locked us up in prison, and U.S. government said that we were not a threat and should be released.

Uighur-Americans came forward, made an offer to the United States government to accept us into Uighur-American society and community. They even went into the courts and contacted the lawyers and wrote a letter to the U.S. government officials asking them to consider releasing us into the United States. Unfortunately, it did not happen, a rather disappointing decision.

Otherwise, the Post ran a really interesting first person piece about Iraq, the Republic of Fear, which makes one fearful that Baghdad is slowly but surely turning into Beirut, circa 1980:

Today, the Americans are just one more militia lost in the anarchy. They, too, are killing Iraqis. ...

Sectarian and ethnic cleansing has since continued apace, as mixed neighborhoods are "purified." In Amriya, dead bodies are being found on the main street at a rate of three or five or seven a day. People are afraid to approach the bodies, or call for an ambulance or the police, for fear that they, too, will be found dead the following day. In Abu Ghraib, Dora, Amriya and other once-diverse neighborhoods, Shiites are being forced to leave. In Maalif and Shaab, Sunnis are being targeted.

The world wonders if Iraq is on the brink of civil war, while Iraqis fear calling it one, knowing the fate such a description would portend. In truth, the civil war started long before Samarra and long before the first uprisings. It started when U.S. troops arrived in Baghdad. It began when Sunnis discovered what they had lost, and Shiites learned what they had gained. And the worst is yet to come.

This made me remember reading a piece in Harper's that said that maybe the best thing for Iraq would be for the US to withdraw and let them have their full-fledged civil war. (It was by Edward Luttwak and was adapted from a piece in Foreign Policy, which can be found here) The version in Harper's ends like this:

...American forces continue to suffer casualties in combat against factions that should be confronting one another instead. Perhaps what the new Iraqi state needs in order to achieve stability is precisely a certain amount of civil war. Preventing it may impede a natural and perhaps very desirable political evolution. Americans would not today be happier if European Great Powers, horrified by the carnage of our own Civil War, had enforced an armistice between North and South that might endure still between two feeble states. ...

It's hard for me to know what to make of this idea. I'm not convinced that an all-out civil war would result in anything but a division of Iraq, or even worse, a regional war that would involve Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and probably Turkey as well. The latter is obviously a horrible idea, but I haven't decided how I feel about the former.

Finally, the atrocities in Haditha make me think that maybe Luttuk and Rosen are right and the US should just get out as soon as possible.

I can't get over this. I know that similar things happened in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and I know that we're talking about kids who have been put in an extremely dangerous and stressful situation, and that sometimes people just crack. But I just don't understand how someone can shoot a one-legged man in a wheelchair nine times. Or how someone can shoot a 1-year old baby. Say that again: a 1-year old baby. I just don't understand.

At some point on Nov. 19, Marines in an armored convoy arrived at Haditha's hospital. They placed the bodies of the victims in the garden of the hospital and left without explanation, said Mohammed al-Hadithi, one of the hospital officials who helped carry the bodies inside. By some accounts, some of the corpses were burnt.

The remains of the 24 lie today in a cemetery called Martyrs' Graveyard. Stray dogs scrounge in the deserted homes. "Democracy assassinated the family that was here," graffiti on one of the houses declared.

Monday, May 15, 2006

The New Republic has recently come out with an issue on Darfur (only some of which is available to non-subscribers), and they come out as a whole for American intervention in Darfur. Kaplan's piece, however, brings up the question of Iraq and asks why it is all right to intervene in Darfur but not in Iraq:

As their criticism of the particulars of the Iraq war has hardened into a broader indictment of U.S. foreign policy, the mostly progressive voices calling for action in Darfur have become caught in a bind of their own devising. Even as they demand intervention in Sudan, they excoriate Washington for employing U.S. military power without due respect to the opinion of the international community and against nations that pose no imminent threat to our own -- which is to say, precisely the terms under which U.S. power would have to be employed in the name of saving Darfur.

He then goes on to argue that neither the African Union nor the UN will intervene or is capable of intervening, leaving the US as the only capable, if not willing, power equipped to intervene.

To my mind, the main reason why I am for intervention in Darfur but was against it in Iraq can be summed up in a single word: genocide. It's happening in Darfur but wasn't happening in Iraq. Now had the Anfal campaign of the late 1980s been continuing, I would have been for intervention in Iraq. This is not to say that genocide should be the threshold for international intervention, but it would at least be a good start. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) responds similarly to Kaplan's jab against him:

Once President Bush and former Secretary of State Colin Powell used the word "genocide" to describe the carnage in Darfur, the United States and every other civilized nation had a moral imperative to act. Those who find it painful to explain the deception and misinformation preceding our invasion of Iraq should not hide behind the victims in Darfur.

As for whether or not the AU or UN could or would stop the genocide, the AU is already there but lacks a proper and muscular mandate that would allow their forces to protect civilians. As it is, they can only protect themselves. Likewise, when and if a UN force intervenes, it would be important for them to have a good mandate and be properly funded, because we know what happens to underfunded blue helmets without a real mandate. As it stands, there are 7,000 AU troops already in Darfur, which could be folded into a UN force; France has at least 1,000 troops in Chad already; and if the UK could be convinced to provide the 5,000 troops that they offered in 2004, then that would make a force of 13,000. Other nations like South Africa and Ghana could also donate more troops, and the US could help shoulder the financial and logistics costs of such an intervention.

While writing this, I've come across an interesting (and much more detailed) plan by the International Crisis Group To Save Darfur, which is similar to my idea:

Crisis Group has long contended that because AMIS has reached the outer limits of its competence, and a UN mission authorised today would not be fully ready to take over from it for some six months, a distinct and separate multinational force should be sent to Darfur to bridge that gap and help stabilise the immediate situation. We have argued, and continue to believe, that NATO would be best from a practical military point of view. Unfortunately, political opposition to this in Khartoum, within the AU and even perhaps within the Atlantic Alliance itself, means it is not achievable at this time.

What we now propose, therefore, is a compromise driven by the urgent need for a more robust force in Darfur. A militarily capable UN member state -- France seems most promising since it already has troops and aircraft in the area -- should offer to the Security Council to go now to Darfur, wearing blue helmets, as the lead nation in the first phase of the incoming UN mission. It could be joined from the outset by forces from one or two other militarily capable UN members (and would probably need to be if the desirable target of around 5,000 personnel for this force is to be achieved). This stabilisation force would be a self-contained, separately commanded UN mission with identified functional or geographic divisions of responsibility that would work beside AMIS and through a liaison unit at its headquarters until arrangements were in place for a 1 October transition to the full UN mission. That full mission would need to be recruited from the best AMIS elements as well as a wider circle of Asian and other member states -- no easy task at a time when several large UN peacekeeping missions in Africa and elsewhere have exhausted the capabilities of many contribution candidates.

The U.S. and other NATO states should respond generously and quickly to requests from it or AMIS to provide logistical help as well as regular access to satellite imagery, air mobility and close air support, especially to deter or react to egregious movements of men or heavy weapons in the border area.

They finish by coming up with a list of recommendations for each of the major parties involved (with the exception of the belligerent parties):

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the African Union:

1. Request the immediate deployment of a UN-mandated stabilisation force to help bolster the AMIS troops and focus on the Chad-Sudan border and the Tawila-Graida corridor.

2. Seek quick negotiation of a single, enhanced ceasefire document to remove the ambiguities of the existing overlapping agreements.

3. Begin immediately to map the location of forces in Darfur so as to manage and enforce the ceasefire better.

5. Improve the reporting mechanisms and procedures for monitoring ceasefire violations and urgently revive and upgrade the compliance and sanctions mechanisms of the ceasefire.

6. Negotiate a series of humanitarian ground rules, in collaboration with the UN, to help hold the parties accountable for the protection of humanitarian operations in their respective areas.

To the United Nations Security Council:

7. Authorise a two-phase intervention in Darfur under Chapter Seven of the Charter, with the following elements:

(a) for the first phase, to be accomplished within a month, a lead nation would serve as the advance element of the full UN mission by sending the bulk of an initial 5,000 troops to Darfur, with three main stabilisation tasks:

i. interdiction of military activities across the Chad-Darfur border;

ii. protection of civilians in Darfur, primarily in the Tawilla-Graida corridor; and

iii. rapid-reaction support of AMIS forces until the transition to a full-fledged UN peace support operation in October 2006.

(b) for the second phase, immediate planning for a peace support operation of some 15,000 troops -- none of whom should be diverted from the mission of the existing UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) -- with a mandate emphasising civilian protection, ceasefire enforcement and monitoring of the Chad-Sudan border, to take over from AMIS as of 1 October 2006.

8. Strengthen the existing sanctions regime by implementing the recommendations in the 30 January 2006 report of the Panel of Experts.

9. Authorise the Secretariat's peacekeeping department (DPKO) to begin planning on an urgent basis and together with the AU both phases of this operation, with priority tasks to include:

(a) identifying areas for early cooperation in Darfur, such as immediate deployment of UN experts to help support the establishment of a functioning ceasefire commission secretariat and the deployment of human rights monitors and translators, including women, to help improve the reporting capacity of AMIS; and

(b) identifying the lead nation to deploy in the initial phase to support AMIS by performing the tasks set out in recommendation 7(a) above and serve as the advance element of the full UN mission.

To Donor Governments:

10. Convene an early pledging conference to ensure that AMIS is fully funded until the UN mission can take over in October 2006.

To the U.S., the EU and its member states and others with a strong interest in regional peace and stability:

11. Undertake major diplomatic efforts to:

(a) persuade Sudan to accept and the AU to confirm transition of AMIS into a strong UN peacekeeping mission as of 1 October 2006 and request in the interim dispatch of an advance force of some 5,000 blue-helmets to assist AMIS by performing essential stabilisation tasks;

(b) persuade the Security Council to authorise a mission of some 15,000, including the strongest AMIS elements and with a strong Chapter VII mandate focused on civilian protection; and

(c) identify the lead nation to contribute the bulk of the advance element to assist AMIS and perform essential stabilisation tasks immediately upon Security Council authorisation, and be prepared to help with all necessary material and logistical support.

12. Concurrently with efforts to strengthen international forces on the ground, pursue the other elements of a coordinated three-part strategy to resolve the Darfur conflict by:

(a) reinforcing AU efforts to negotiate an enhanced ceasefire and a political settlement at Abuja, including by naming special envoys; and

(b) seeking accountability and an end to impunity by enforcing the Security Council's sanction regime and supporting human rights monitoring mechanisms and the work of the ICC.

Monday, May 08, 2006

An article in the Post reports today that Iranian President Ahmadinejad sent a letter to President Bush in order to propose "new solutions for getting out of international problems and the current fragile situation in the world." It mentions the quote put forth by the Times that Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be "wiped off the map." Since this comment was reported on, it has been used as a reason why Iran should not have nuclear weapons. I've been somewhat skeptical about the translation, and as it turns out, there is some disagreement about what was actually said. This disagreement has pitted Christopher Hitchens against Juan Cole, the latter being the only one of the two who actually speaks Farsi. A good summary of the online fight can be found here.

The actual sentence in question seems to be this: "een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad." I don't speak Farsi, but several of my colleagues are Iranian, and I've sent them the text to see what they think about it. The only word I can recognize is qods which is Farsi for al Quds, which is Jerusalem in English. Cole's translation is "the Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem must [vanish from] from the page of time." As it turns out, the Israeli group Memri offers a translation that is very similar to Cole's ("eliminated from the pages of history").

As it turns out, after the comments, the Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki denied the remarks:

Mottaki also denied during a press conference in Brussels that Tehran wanted to see Israel "wiped off the map."

"Nobody can remove a country from the map. This is a misunderstanding in Europe of what our president mentioned," he said. "How is it possible to remove a country from the map? He is talking about the regime. We do not recognize legally this regime."

Another denial came on CNN's Late Edition from Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh:

SOLTANIEH: The supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran has announced, more than two years, and few cases, the Western media have reflected to public of the world, that if the divine religions -- followers of the divine religions, Jews, Christians and Muslims, in that area follow a referendum, democratic referendum, and are one (ph) with homeless Palestinians, Iranian government and Iranian people would respect their decision.

Therefore, these are fabricated news that they are threatening and using this as an excuse for the military aggression or the aggressive policy. [...]

BLITZER: I have to wrap this up, but I want to get your response to this issue of Israel because it's become such a prominent issue in this whole discussion over nuclear plans that Iran may or may not have. This is what the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said on October 26 at that World Without Zionism conference.

He said, "Israel must be wiped off the map of the world, and god willing, with the force of god behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionists."

You understand why people in the West, especially here in the United States, are so concerned about your program, your nuclear program, given those kinds of direct threats against Israel, which happens to be a strong ally of the United States.

SOLTANIEH: I want to very briefly remind you that the policy of Islamic Republic of Iran and according to spirit and letter of our constitution is against any sort of school of thought or regime such as apartheid, Zionism, racism, and this is a matter of principle.

Therefore, what you are talking about as apartheid was disappeared and it could not be accepted by civilized world, this Zionism and aggression of racism is also condemned. [...]

BLITZER: Does your support for the removal of Zionism mean you want to see Israel destroyed?

SOLTANIEH: I have already explained to you and reflected to you the policy echoed by our supreme leader.

It means that if in that region, the divine religion followers of the Jews, Christians and Muslims, that all three are very respectful -- and we have Jews in Iran, which are peacefully living and they are represented in our parliament, they are fully respected -- if they come with the Palestinians, homeless Palestinians, to come and through following the democratic process will decide on a government and live in peace as they were living a thousand years of coexistence of these divine religions, Iran will support because we are looking for and we support peaceful settlement of the whole issue and peaceful coexistence of these divine religions in the Middle East. Let's hope for the peace.

BLITZER: But should there be a state of Israel?

SOLTANIEH: I think I've already answered to you. If Israel is a synonym and will give the indication of Zionism mentality, no.

But if you are going to conclude that we have said the people there have to be removed or we they have to be massacred or so, this is fabricated, unfortunate selective approach to what the mentality and policy of Islamic Republic of Iran is. I have to correct, and I did so.

So it seems that the statements by Ahmadinejad, or at the very least official Iranian policy, is much more nuanced than the Western media would have us believe. Furthermore, it is important to remember that Ahmadinejad does not control Iranian foreign policy. In an interesting article in the New York Review about Iran and the bomb, Christopher de Bellaigue has this to say:

Iran's enmity toward Israel is more nuanced than Ahmadinejad's statements suggest. The President's declarations that Israel should be "wiped off the map," and that the Holocaust is a "myth," understandably aroused fears that Iran might be considering an attack on Israel. But Iran's senior civilian and military officials have insisted that Iran will strike Israel only if Israel strikes first. More significantly, the President and supreme leader have both reiterated Iran's longstanding demand for a referendum on the status of Israel that would involve all Palestinian refugees. This official position would not seem to be consistent with an ambition to destroy Israel by force, least of all by using nuclear arms, which would endanger the very Palestinians whom the Iranians claim to be protecting. Several senior Iranian officials, including Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president who heads a powerful arbitration council in Tehran, have not disguised their irritation with the President's comments. But Ahmadinejad has benefited from the furor. By raising his prestige among hard-line Islamists around the world, the President has made it harder for his domestic opponents, who include Rafsanjani, to undermine him.

I will post the English translation later this week, once my Iranian colleagues have had the chance to get back to me.

Monday, May 29, 2006

Here are a few interesting links that I've come across in the last few days:

A story from ABC about Chinese Muslims wrongly imprisoned in Guantanamo and then finally released after 4.5 years. They couldn't be sent to China since the government there persecutes Uighurs, and despite being found innocent of any charges (NLEC, or No Longer Enemy Combattant, in Guantanamo Bay terminology - Mr Kafka could not have made this up if he had tried), being put away by the Americans for 4.5 years is enough to garner a bad reputation. So apparently, no country would take them, the US included, with the single and solitary exception of Albania:

We are very pleased that the Albanian government and the Albanian people opened their hearts and welcomed us. Despite the fact that all the strong, powerful, democratic countries are able and capable of accepting us, they did not do that. We are having some problems ... there are no Uighurs in Albania, and we don't speak the Albanian language. ...

Were hoping that the United States government would recognize the mistake that it has done and accept, allow us to enter the United States. U.S. government captured us, U.S. government incarcerated us, locked us up in prison, and U.S. government said that we were not a threat and should be released.

Uighur-Americans came forward, made an offer to the United States government to accept us into Uighur-American society and community. They even went into the courts and contacted the lawyers and wrote a letter to the U.S. government officials asking them to consider releasing us into the United States. Unfortunately, it did not happen, a rather disappointing decision.

Otherwise, the Post ran a really interesting first person piece about Iraq, the Republic of Fear, which makes one fearful that Baghdad is slowly but surely turning into Beirut, circa 1980:

Today, the Americans are just one more militia lost in the anarchy. They, too, are killing Iraqis. ...

Sectarian and ethnic cleansing has since continued apace, as mixed neighborhoods are "purified." In Amriya, dead bodies are being found on the main street at a rate of three or five or seven a day. People are afraid to approach the bodies, or call for an ambulance or the police, for fear that they, too, will be found dead the following day. In Abu Ghraib, Dora, Amriya and other once-diverse neighborhoods, Shiites are being forced to leave. In Maalif and Shaab, Sunnis are being targeted.

The world wonders if Iraq is on the brink of civil war, while Iraqis fear calling it one, knowing the fate such a description would portend. In truth, the civil war started long before Samarra and long before the first uprisings. It started when U.S. troops arrived in Baghdad. It began when Sunnis discovered what they had lost, and Shiites learned what they had gained. And the worst is yet to come.

This made me remember reading a piece in Harper's that said that maybe the best thing for Iraq would be for the US to withdraw and let them have their full-fledged civil war. (It was by Edward Luttwak and was adapted from a piece in Foreign Policy, which can be found here) The version in Harper's ends like this:

...American forces continue to suffer casualties in combat against factions that should be confronting one another instead. Perhaps what the new Iraqi state needs in order to achieve stability is precisely a certain amount of civil war. Preventing it may impede a natural and perhaps very desirable political evolution. Americans would not today be happier if European Great Powers, horrified by the carnage of our own Civil War, had enforced an armistice between North and South that might endure still between two feeble states. ...

It's hard for me to know what to make of this idea. I'm not convinced that an all-out civil war would result in anything but a division of Iraq, or even worse, a regional war that would involve Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and probably Turkey as well. The latter is obviously a horrible idea, but I haven't decided how I feel about the former.

Finally, the atrocities in Haditha make me think that maybe Luttuk and Rosen are right and the US should just get out as soon as possible.

I can't get over this. I know that similar things happened in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and I know that we're talking about kids who have been put in an extremely dangerous and stressful situation, and that sometimes people just crack. But I just don't understand how someone can shoot a one-legged man in a wheelchair nine times. Or how someone can shoot a 1-year old baby. Say that again: a 1-year old baby. I just don't understand.

At some point on Nov. 19, Marines in an armored convoy arrived at Haditha's hospital. They placed the bodies of the victims in the garden of the hospital and left without explanation, said Mohammed al-Hadithi, one of the hospital officials who helped carry the bodies inside. By some accounts, some of the corpses were burnt.

The remains of the 24 lie today in a cemetery called Martyrs' Graveyard. Stray dogs scrounge in the deserted homes. "Democracy assassinated the family that was here," graffiti on one of the houses declared.

Monday, May 15, 2006

The New Republic has recently come out with an issue on Darfur (only some of which is available to non-subscribers), and they come out as a whole for American intervention in Darfur. Kaplan's piece, however, brings up the question of Iraq and asks why it is all right to intervene in Darfur but not in Iraq:

As their criticism of the particulars of the Iraq war has hardened into a broader indictment of U.S. foreign policy, the mostly progressive voices calling for action in Darfur have become caught in a bind of their own devising. Even as they demand intervention in Sudan, they excoriate Washington for employing U.S. military power without due respect to the opinion of the international community and against nations that pose no imminent threat to our own -- which is to say, precisely the terms under which U.S. power would have to be employed in the name of saving Darfur.

He then goes on to argue that neither the African Union nor the UN will intervene or is capable of intervening, leaving the US as the only capable, if not willing, power equipped to intervene.

To my mind, the main reason why I am for intervention in Darfur but was against it in Iraq can be summed up in a single word: genocide. It's happening in Darfur but wasn't happening in Iraq. Now had the Anfal campaign of the late 1980s been continuing, I would have been for intervention in Iraq. This is not to say that genocide should be the threshold for international intervention, but it would at least be a good start. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) responds similarly to Kaplan's jab against him:

Once President Bush and former Secretary of State Colin Powell used the word "genocide" to describe the carnage in Darfur, the United States and every other civilized nation had a moral imperative to act. Those who find it painful to explain the deception and misinformation preceding our invasion of Iraq should not hide behind the victims in Darfur.

As for whether or not the AU or UN could or would stop the genocide, the AU is already there but lacks a proper and muscular mandate that would allow their forces to protect civilians. As it is, they can only protect themselves. Likewise, when and if a UN force intervenes, it would be important for them to have a good mandate and be properly funded, because we know what happens to underfunded blue helmets without a real mandate. As it stands, there are 7,000 AU troops already in Darfur, which could be folded into a UN force; France has at least 1,000 troops in Chad already; and if the UK could be convinced to provide the 5,000 troops that they offered in 2004, then that would make a force of 13,000. Other nations like South Africa and Ghana could also donate more troops, and the US could help shoulder the financial and logistics costs of such an intervention.

While writing this, I've come across an interesting (and much more detailed) plan by the International Crisis Group To Save Darfur, which is similar to my idea:

Crisis Group has long contended that because AMIS has reached the outer limits of its competence, and a UN mission authorised today would not be fully ready to take over from it for some six months, a distinct and separate multinational force should be sent to Darfur to bridge that gap and help stabilise the immediate situation. We have argued, and continue to believe, that NATO would be best from a practical military point of view. Unfortunately, political opposition to this in Khartoum, within the AU and even perhaps within the Atlantic Alliance itself, means it is not achievable at this time.

What we now propose, therefore, is a compromise driven by the urgent need for a more robust force in Darfur. A militarily capable UN member state -- France seems most promising since it already has troops and aircraft in the area -- should offer to the Security Council to go now to Darfur, wearing blue helmets, as the lead nation in the first phase of the incoming UN mission. It could be joined from the outset by forces from one or two other militarily capable UN members (and would probably need to be if the desirable target of around 5,000 personnel for this force is to be achieved). This stabilisation force would be a self-contained, separately commanded UN mission with identified functional or geographic divisions of responsibility that would work beside AMIS and through a liaison unit at its headquarters until arrangements were in place for a 1 October transition to the full UN mission. That full mission would need to be recruited from the best AMIS elements as well as a wider circle of Asian and other member states -- no easy task at a time when several large UN peacekeeping missions in Africa and elsewhere have exhausted the capabilities of many contribution candidates.

The U.S. and other NATO states should respond generously and quickly to requests from it or AMIS to provide logistical help as well as regular access to satellite imagery, air mobility and close air support, especially to deter or react to egregious movements of men or heavy weapons in the border area.

They finish by coming up with a list of recommendations for each of the major parties involved (with the exception of the belligerent parties):

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the African Union:

1. Request the immediate deployment of a UN-mandated stabilisation force to help bolster the AMIS troops and focus on the Chad-Sudan border and the Tawila-Graida corridor.

2. Seek quick negotiation of a single, enhanced ceasefire document to remove the ambiguities of the existing overlapping agreements.

3. Begin immediately to map the location of forces in Darfur so as to manage and enforce the ceasefire better.

5. Improve the reporting mechanisms and procedures for monitoring ceasefire violations and urgently revive and upgrade the compliance and sanctions mechanisms of the ceasefire.

6. Negotiate a series of humanitarian ground rules, in collaboration with the UN, to help hold the parties accountable for the protection of humanitarian operations in their respective areas.

To the United Nations Security Council:

7. Authorise a two-phase intervention in Darfur under Chapter Seven of the Charter, with the following elements:

(a) for the first phase, to be accomplished within a month, a lead nation would serve as the advance element of the full UN mission by sending the bulk of an initial 5,000 troops to Darfur, with three main stabilisation tasks:

i. interdiction of military activities across the Chad-Darfur border;

ii. protection of civilians in Darfur, primarily in the Tawilla-Graida corridor; and

iii. rapid-reaction support of AMIS forces until the transition to a full-fledged UN peace support operation in October 2006.

(b) for the second phase, immediate planning for a peace support operation of some 15,000 troops -- none of whom should be diverted from the mission of the existing UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) -- with a mandate emphasising civilian protection, ceasefire enforcement and monitoring of the Chad-Sudan border, to take over from AMIS as of 1 October 2006.

8. Strengthen the existing sanctions regime by implementing the recommendations in the 30 January 2006 report of the Panel of Experts.

9. Authorise the Secretariat's peacekeeping department (DPKO) to begin planning on an urgent basis and together with the AU both phases of this operation, with priority tasks to include:

(a) identifying areas for early cooperation in Darfur, such as immediate deployment of UN experts to help support the establishment of a functioning ceasefire commission secretariat and the deployment of human rights monitors and translators, including women, to help improve the reporting capacity of AMIS; and

(b) identifying the lead nation to deploy in the initial phase to support AMIS by performing the tasks set out in recommendation 7(a) above and serve as the advance element of the full UN mission.

To Donor Governments:

10. Convene an early pledging conference to ensure that AMIS is fully funded until the UN mission can take over in October 2006.

To the U.S., the EU and its member states and others with a strong interest in regional peace and stability:

11. Undertake major diplomatic efforts to:

(a) persuade Sudan to accept and the AU to confirm transition of AMIS into a strong UN peacekeeping mission as of 1 October 2006 and request in the interim dispatch of an advance force of some 5,000 blue-helmets to assist AMIS by performing essential stabilisation tasks;

(b) persuade the Security Council to authorise a mission of some 15,000, including the strongest AMIS elements and with a strong Chapter VII mandate focused on civilian protection; and

(c) identify the lead nation to contribute the bulk of the advance element to assist AMIS and perform essential stabilisation tasks immediately upon Security Council authorisation, and be prepared to help with all necessary material and logistical support.

12. Concurrently with efforts to strengthen international forces on the ground, pursue the other elements of a coordinated three-part strategy to resolve the Darfur conflict by:

(a) reinforcing AU efforts to negotiate an enhanced ceasefire and a political settlement at Abuja, including by naming special envoys; and

(b) seeking accountability and an end to impunity by enforcing the Security Council's sanction regime and supporting human rights monitoring mechanisms and the work of the ICC.

Monday, May 08, 2006

An article in the Post reports today that Iranian President Ahmadinejad sent a letter to President Bush in order to propose "new solutions for getting out of international problems and the current fragile situation in the world." It mentions the quote put forth by the Times that Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be "wiped off the map." Since this comment was reported on, it has been used as a reason why Iran should not have nuclear weapons. I've been somewhat skeptical about the translation, and as it turns out, there is some disagreement about what was actually said. This disagreement has pitted Christopher Hitchens against Juan Cole, the latter being the only one of the two who actually speaks Farsi. A good summary of the online fight can be found here.

The actual sentence in question seems to be this: "een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad." I don't speak Farsi, but several of my colleagues are Iranian, and I've sent them the text to see what they think about it. The only word I can recognize is qods which is Farsi for al Quds, which is Jerusalem in English. Cole's translation is "the Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem must [vanish from] from the page of time." As it turns out, the Israeli group Memri offers a translation that is very similar to Cole's ("eliminated from the pages of history").

As it turns out, after the comments, the Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki denied the remarks:

Mottaki also denied during a press conference in Brussels that Tehran wanted to see Israel "wiped off the map."

"Nobody can remove a country from the map. This is a misunderstanding in Europe of what our president mentioned," he said. "How is it possible to remove a country from the map? He is talking about the regime. We do not recognize legally this regime."

Another denial came on CNN's Late Edition from Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh:

SOLTANIEH: The supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran has announced, more than two years, and few cases, the Western media have reflected to public of the world, that if the divine religions -- followers of the divine religions, Jews, Christians and Muslims, in that area follow a referendum, democratic referendum, and are one (ph) with homeless Palestinians, Iranian government and Iranian people would respect their decision.

Therefore, these are fabricated news that they are threatening and using this as an excuse for the military aggression or the aggressive policy. [...]

BLITZER: I have to wrap this up, but I want to get your response to this issue of Israel because it's become such a prominent issue in this whole discussion over nuclear plans that Iran may or may not have. This is what the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said on October 26 at that World Without Zionism conference.

He said, "Israel must be wiped off the map of the world, and god willing, with the force of god behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionists."

You understand why people in the West, especially here in the United States, are so concerned about your program, your nuclear program, given those kinds of direct threats against Israel, which happens to be a strong ally of the United States.

SOLTANIEH: I want to very briefly remind you that the policy of Islamic Republic of Iran and according to spirit and letter of our constitution is against any sort of school of thought or regime such as apartheid, Zionism, racism, and this is a matter of principle.

Therefore, what you are talking about as apartheid was disappeared and it could not be accepted by civilized world, this Zionism and aggression of racism is also condemned. [...]

BLITZER: Does your support for the removal of Zionism mean you want to see Israel destroyed?

SOLTANIEH: I have already explained to you and reflected to you the policy echoed by our supreme leader.

It means that if in that region, the divine religion followers of the Jews, Christians and Muslims, that all three are very respectful -- and we have Jews in Iran, which are peacefully living and they are represented in our parliament, they are fully respected -- if they come with the Palestinians, homeless Palestinians, to come and through following the democratic process will decide on a government and live in peace as they were living a thousand years of coexistence of these divine religions, Iran will support because we are looking for and we support peaceful settlement of the whole issue and peaceful coexistence of these divine religions in the Middle East. Let's hope for the peace.

BLITZER: But should there be a state of Israel?

SOLTANIEH: I think I've already answered to you. If Israel is a synonym and will give the indication of Zionism mentality, no.

But if you are going to conclude that we have said the people there have to be removed or we they have to be massacred or so, this is fabricated, unfortunate selective approach to what the mentality and policy of Islamic Republic of Iran is. I have to correct, and I did so.

So it seems that the statements by Ahmadinejad, or at the very least official Iranian policy, is much more nuanced than the Western media would have us believe. Furthermore, it is important to remember that Ahmadinejad does not control Iranian foreign policy. In an interesting article in the New York Review about Iran and the bomb, Christopher de Bellaigue has this to say:

Iran's enmity toward Israel is more nuanced than Ahmadinejad's statements suggest. The President's declarations that Israel should be "wiped off the map," and that the Holocaust is a "myth," understandably aroused fears that Iran might be considering an attack on Israel. But Iran's senior civilian and military officials have insisted that Iran will strike Israel only if Israel strikes first. More significantly, the President and supreme leader have both reiterated Iran's longstanding demand for a referendum on the status of Israel that would involve all Palestinian refugees. This official position would not seem to be consistent with an ambition to destroy Israel by force, least of all by using nuclear arms, which would endanger the very Palestinians whom the Iranians claim to be protecting. Several senior Iranian officials, including Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president who heads a powerful arbitration council in Tehran, have not disguised their irritation with the President's comments. But Ahmadinejad has benefited from the furor. By raising his prestige among hard-line Islamists around the world, the President has made it harder for his domestic opponents, who include Rafsanjani, to undermine him.

I will post the English translation later this week, once my Iranian colleagues have had the chance to get back to me.

Monday, May 29, 2006

Here are a few interesting links that I've come across in the last few days:

A story from ABC about Chinese Muslims wrongly imprisoned in Guantanamo and then finally released after 4.5 years. They couldn't be sent to China since the government there persecutes Uighurs, and despite being found innocent of any charges (NLEC, or No Longer Enemy Combattant, in Guantanamo Bay terminology - Mr Kafka could not have made this up if he had tried), being put away by the Americans for 4.5 years is enough to garner a bad reputation. So apparently, no country would take them, the US included, with the single and solitary exception of Albania:

We are very pleased that the Albanian government and the Albanian people opened their hearts and welcomed us. Despite the fact that all the strong, powerful, democratic countries are able and capable of accepting us, they did not do that. We are having some problems ... there are no Uighurs in Albania, and we don't speak the Albanian language. ...

Were hoping that the United States government would recognize the mistake that it has done and accept, allow us to enter the United States. U.S. government captured us, U.S. government incarcerated us, locked us up in prison, and U.S. government said that we were not a threat and should be released.

Uighur-Americans came forward, made an offer to the United States government to accept us into Uighur-American society and community. They even went into the courts and contacted the lawyers and wrote a letter to the U.S. government officials asking them to consider releasing us into the United States. Unfortunately, it did not happen, a rather disappointing decision.

Otherwise, the Post ran a really interesting first person piece about Iraq, the Republic of Fear, which makes one fearful that Baghdad is slowly but surely turning into Beirut, circa 1980:

Today, the Americans are just one more militia lost in the anarchy. They, too, are killing Iraqis. ...

Sectarian and ethnic cleansing has since continued apace, as mixed neighborhoods are "purified." In Amriya, dead bodies are being found on the main street at a rate of three or five or seven a day. People are afraid to approach the bodies, or call for an ambulance or the police, for fear that they, too, will be found dead the following day. In Abu Ghraib, Dora, Amriya and other once-diverse neighborhoods, Shiites are being forced to leave. In Maalif and Shaab, Sunnis are being targeted.

The world wonders if Iraq is on the brink of civil war, while Iraqis fear calling it one, knowing the fate such a description would portend. In truth, the civil war started long before Samarra and long before the first uprisings. It started when U.S. troops arrived in Baghdad. It began when Sunnis discovered what they had lost, and Shiites learned what they had gained. And the worst is yet to come.

This made me remember reading a piece in Harper's that said that maybe the best thing for Iraq would be for the US to withdraw and let them have their full-fledged civil war. (It was by Edward Luttwak and was adapted from a piece in Foreign Policy, which can be found here) The version in Harper's ends like this:

...American forces continue to suffer casualties in combat against factions that should be confronting one another instead. Perhaps what the new Iraqi state needs in order to achieve stability is precisely a certain amount of civil war. Preventing it may impede a natural and perhaps very desirable political evolution. Americans would not today be happier if European Great Powers, horrified by the carnage of our own Civil War, had enforced an armistice between North and South that might endure still between two feeble states. ...

It's hard for me to know what to make of this idea. I'm not convinced that an all-out civil war would result in anything but a division of Iraq, or even worse, a regional war that would involve Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and probably Turkey as well. The latter is obviously a horrible idea, but I haven't decided how I feel about the former.

Finally, the atrocities in Haditha make me think that maybe Luttuk and Rosen are right and the US should just get out as soon as possible.

I can't get over this. I know that similar things happened in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and I know that we're talking about kids who have been put in an extremely dangerous and stressful situation, and that sometimes people just crack. But I just don't understand how someone can shoot a one-legged man in a wheelchair nine times. Or how someone can shoot a 1-year old baby. Say that again: a 1-year old baby. I just don't understand.

At some point on Nov. 19, Marines in an armored convoy arrived at Haditha's hospital. They placed the bodies of the victims in the garden of the hospital and left without explanation, said Mohammed al-Hadithi, one of the hospital officials who helped carry the bodies inside. By some accounts, some of the corpses were burnt.

The remains of the 24 lie today in a cemetery called Martyrs' Graveyard. Stray dogs scrounge in the deserted homes. "Democracy assassinated the family that was here," graffiti on one of the houses declared.

Monday, May 15, 2006

The New Republic has recently come out with an issue on Darfur (only some of which is available to non-subscribers), and they come out as a whole for American intervention in Darfur. Kaplan's piece, however, brings up the question of Iraq and asks why it is all right to intervene in Darfur but not in Iraq:

As their criticism of the particulars of the Iraq war has hardened into a broader indictment of U.S. foreign policy, the mostly progressive voices calling for action in Darfur have become caught in a bind of their own devising. Even as they demand intervention in Sudan, they excoriate Washington for employing U.S. military power without due respect to the opinion of the international community and against nations that pose no imminent threat to our own -- which is to say, precisely the terms under which U.S. power would have to be employed in the name of saving Darfur.

He then goes on to argue that neither the African Union nor the UN will intervene or is capable of intervening, leaving the US as the only capable, if not willing, power equipped to intervene.

To my mind, the main reason why I am for intervention in Darfur but was against it in Iraq can be summed up in a single word: genocide. It's happening in Darfur but wasn't happening in Iraq. Now had the Anfal campaign of the late 1980s been continuing, I would have been for intervention in Iraq. This is not to say that genocide should be the threshold for international intervention, but it would at least be a good start. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) responds similarly to Kaplan's jab against him:

Once President Bush and former Secretary of State Colin Powell used the word "genocide" to describe the carnage in Darfur, the United States and every other civilized nation had a moral imperative to act. Those who find it painful to explain the deception and misinformation preceding our invasion of Iraq should not hide behind the victims in Darfur.

As for whether or not the AU or UN could or would stop the genocide, the AU is already there but lacks a proper and muscular mandate that would allow their forces to protect civilians. As it is, they can only protect themselves. Likewise, when and if a UN force intervenes, it would be important for them to have a good mandate and be properly funded, because we know what happens to underfunded blue helmets without a real mandate. As it stands, there are 7,000 AU troops already in Darfur, which could be folded into a UN force; France has at least 1,000 troops in Chad already; and if the UK could be convinced to provide the 5,000 troops that they offered in 2004, then that would make a force of 13,000. Other nations like South Africa and Ghana could also donate more troops, and the US could help shoulder the financial and logistics costs of such an intervention.

While writing this, I've come across an interesting (and much more detailed) plan by the International Crisis Group To Save Darfur, which is similar to my idea:

Crisis Group has long contended that because AMIS has reached the outer limits of its competence, and a UN mission authorised today would not be fully ready to take over from it for some six months, a distinct and separate multinational force should be sent to Darfur to bridge that gap and help stabilise the immediate situation. We have argued, and continue to believe, that NATO would be best from a practical military point of view. Unfortunately, political opposition to this in Khartoum, within the AU and even perhaps within the Atlantic Alliance itself, means it is not achievable at this time.

What we now propose, therefore, is a compromise driven by the urgent need for a more robust force in Darfur. A militarily capable UN member state -- France seems most promising since it already has troops and aircraft in the area -- should offer to the Security Council to go now to Darfur, wearing blue helmets, as the lead nation in the first phase of the incoming UN mission. It could be joined from the outset by forces from one or two other militarily capable UN members (and would probably need to be if the desirable target of around 5,000 personnel for this force is to be achieved). This stabilisation force would be a self-contained, separately commanded UN mission with identified functional or geographic divisions of responsibility that would work beside AMIS and through a liaison unit at its headquarters until arrangements were in place for a 1 October transition to the full UN mission. That full mission would need to be recruited from the best AMIS elements as well as a wider circle of Asian and other member states -- no easy task at a time when several large UN peacekeeping missions in Africa and elsewhere have exhausted the capabilities of many contribution candidates.

The U.S. and other NATO states should respond generously and quickly to requests from it or AMIS to provide logistical help as well as regular access to satellite imagery, air mobility and close air support, especially to deter or react to egregious movements of men or heavy weapons in the border area.

They finish by coming up with a list of recommendations for each of the major parties involved (with the exception of the belligerent parties):

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the African Union:

1. Request the immediate deployment of a UN-mandated stabilisation force to help bolster the AMIS troops and focus on the Chad-Sudan border and the Tawila-Graida corridor.

2. Seek quick negotiation of a single, enhanced ceasefire document to remove the ambiguities of the existing overlapping agreements.

3. Begin immediately to map the location of forces in Darfur so as to manage and enforce the ceasefire better.

5. Improve the reporting mechanisms and procedures for monitoring ceasefire violations and urgently revive and upgrade the compliance and sanctions mechanisms of the ceasefire.

6. Negotiate a series of humanitarian ground rules, in collaboration with the UN, to help hold the parties accountable for the protection of humanitarian operations in their respective areas.

To the United Nations Security Council:

7. Authorise a two-phase intervention in Darfur under Chapter Seven of the Charter, with the following elements:

(a) for the first phase, to be accomplished within a month, a lead nation would serve as the advance element of the full UN mission by sending the bulk of an initial 5,000 troops to Darfur, with three main stabilisation tasks:

i. interdiction of military activities across the Chad-Darfur border;

ii. protection of civilians in Darfur, primarily in the Tawilla-Graida corridor; and

iii. rapid-reaction support of AMIS forces until the transition to a full-fledged UN peace support operation in October 2006.

(b) for the second phase, immediate planning for a peace support operation of some 15,000 troops -- none of whom should be diverted from the mission of the existing UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) -- with a mandate emphasising civilian protection, ceasefire enforcement and monitoring of the Chad-Sudan border, to take over from AMIS as of 1 October 2006.

8. Strengthen the existing sanctions regime by implementing the recommendations in the 30 January 2006 report of the Panel of Experts.

9. Authorise the Secretariat's peacekeeping department (DPKO) to begin planning on an urgent basis and together with the AU both phases of this operation, with priority tasks to include:

(a) identifying areas for early cooperation in Darfur, such as immediate deployment of UN experts to help support the establishment of a functioning ceasefire commission secretariat and the deployment of human rights monitors and translators, including women, to help improve the reporting capacity of AMIS; and

(b) identifying the lead nation to deploy in the initial phase to support AMIS by performing the tasks set out in recommendation 7(a) above and serve as the advance element of the full UN mission.

To Donor Governments:

10. Convene an early pledging conference to ensure that AMIS is fully funded until the UN mission can take over in October 2006.

To the U.S., the EU and its member states and others with a strong interest in regional peace and stability:

11. Undertake major diplomatic efforts to:

(a) persuade Sudan to accept and the AU to confirm transition of AMIS into a strong UN peacekeeping mission as of 1 October 2006 and request in the interim dispatch of an advance force of some 5,000 blue-helmets to assist AMIS by performing essential stabilisation tasks;

(b) persuade the Security Council to authorise a mission of some 15,000, including the strongest AMIS elements and with a strong Chapter VII mandate focused on civilian protection; and

(c) identify the lead nation to contribute the bulk of the advance element to assist AMIS and perform essential stabilisation tasks immediately upon Security Council authorisation, and be prepared to help with all necessary material and logistical support.

12. Concurrently with efforts to strengthen international forces on the ground, pursue the other elements of a coordinated three-part strategy to resolve the Darfur conflict by:

(a) reinforcing AU efforts to negotiate an enhanced ceasefire and a political settlement at Abuja, including by naming special envoys; and

(b) seeking accountability and an end to impunity by enforcing the Security Council's sanction regime and supporting human rights monitoring mechanisms and the work of the ICC.

Monday, May 08, 2006

An article in the Post reports today that Iranian President Ahmadinejad sent a letter to President Bush in order to propose "new solutions for getting out of international problems and the current fragile situation in the world." It mentions the quote put forth by the Times that Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be "wiped off the map." Since this comment was reported on, it has been used as a reason why Iran should not have nuclear weapons. I've been somewhat skeptical about the translation, and as it turns out, there is some disagreement about what was actually said. This disagreement has pitted Christopher Hitchens against Juan Cole, the latter being the only one of the two who actually speaks Farsi. A good summary of the online fight can be found here.

The actual sentence in question seems to be this: "een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad." I don't speak Farsi, but several of my colleagues are Iranian, and I've sent them the text to see what they think about it. The only word I can recognize is qods which is Farsi for al Quds, which is Jerusalem in English. Cole's translation is "the Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem must [vanish from] from the page of time." As it turns out, the Israeli group Memri offers a translation that is very similar to Cole's ("eliminated from the pages of history").

As it turns out, after the comments, the Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki denied the remarks:

Mottaki also denied during a press conference in Brussels that Tehran wanted to see Israel "wiped off the map."

"Nobody can remove a country from the map. This is a misunderstanding in Europe of what our president mentioned," he said. "How is it possible to remove a country from the map? He is talking about the regime. We do not recognize legally this regime."

Another denial came on CNN's Late Edition from Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh:

SOLTANIEH: The supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran has announced, more than two years, and few cases, the Western media have reflected to public of the world, that if the divine religions -- followers of the divine religions, Jews, Christians and Muslims, in that area follow a referendum, democratic referendum, and are one (ph) with homeless Palestinians, Iranian government and Iranian people would respect their decision.

Therefore, these are fabricated news that they are threatening and using this as an excuse for the military aggression or the aggressive policy. [...]

BLITZER: I have to wrap this up, but I want to get your response to this issue of Israel because it's become such a prominent issue in this whole discussion over nuclear plans that Iran may or may not have. This is what the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said on October 26 at that World Without Zionism conference.

He said, "Israel must be wiped off the map of the world, and god willing, with the force of god behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionists."

You understand why people in the West, especially here in the United States, are so concerned about your program, your nuclear program, given those kinds of direct threats against Israel, which happens to be a strong ally of the United States.

SOLTANIEH: I want to very briefly remind you that the policy of Islamic Republic of Iran and according to spirit and letter of our constitution is against any sort of school of thought or regime such as apartheid, Zionism, racism, and this is a matter of principle.

Therefore, what you are talking about as apartheid was disappeared and it could not be accepted by civilized world, this Zionism and aggression of racism is also condemned. [...]

BLITZER: Does your support for the removal of Zionism mean you want to see Israel destroyed?

SOLTANIEH: I have already explained to you and reflected to you the policy echoed by our supreme leader.

It means that if in that region, the divine religion followers of the Jews, Christians and Muslims, that all three are very respectful -- and we have Jews in Iran, which are peacefully living and they are represented in our parliament, they are fully respected -- if they come with the Palestinians, homeless Palestinians, to come and through following the democratic process will decide on a government and live in peace as they were living a thousand years of coexistence of these divine religions, Iran will support because we are looking for and we support peaceful settlement of the whole issue and peaceful coexistence of these divine religions in the Middle East. Let's hope for the peace.

BLITZER: But should there be a state of Israel?

SOLTANIEH: I think I've already answered to you. If Israel is a synonym and will give the indication of Zionism mentality, no.

But if you are going to conclude that we have said the people there have to be removed or we they have to be massacred or so, this is fabricated, unfortunate selective approach to what the mentality and policy of Islamic Republic of Iran is. I have to correct, and I did so.

So it seems that the statements by Ahmadinejad, or at the very least official Iranian policy, is much more nuanced than the Western media would have us believe. Furthermore, it is important to remember that Ahmadinejad does not control Iranian foreign policy. In an interesting article in the New York Review about Iran and the bomb, Christopher de Bellaigue has this to say:

Iran's enmity toward Israel is more nuanced than Ahmadinejad's statements suggest. The President's declarations that Israel should be "wiped off the map," and that the Holocaust is a "myth," understandably aroused fears that Iran might be considering an attack on Israel. But Iran's senior civilian and military officials have insisted that Iran will strike Israel only if Israel strikes first. More significantly, the President and supreme leader have both reiterated Iran's longstanding demand for a referendum on the status of Israel that would involve all Palestinian refugees. This official position would not seem to be consistent with an ambition to destroy Israel by force, least of all by using nuclear arms, which would endanger the very Palestinians whom the Iranians claim to be protecting. Several senior Iranian officials, including Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president who heads a powerful arbitration council in Tehran, have not disguised their irritation with the President's comments. But Ahmadinejad has benefited from the furor. By raising his prestige among hard-line Islamists around the world, the President has made it harder for his domestic opponents, who include Rafsanjani, to undermine him.

I will post the English translation later this week, once my Iranian colleagues have had the chance to get back to me.

Monday, May 29, 2006

Here are a few interesting links that I've come across in the last few days:

A story from ABC about Chinese Muslims wrongly imprisoned in Guantanamo and then finally released after 4.5 years. They couldn't be sent to China since the government there persecutes Uighurs, and despite being found innocent of any charges (NLEC, or No Longer Enemy Combattant, in Guantanamo Bay terminology - Mr Kafka could not have made this up if he had tried), being put away by the Americans for 4.5 years is enough to garner a bad reputation. So apparently, no country would take them, the US included, with the single and solitary exception of Albania:

We are very pleased that the Albanian government and the Albanian people opened their hearts and welcomed us. Despite the fact that all the strong, powerful, democratic countries are able and capable of accepting us, they did not do that. We are having some problems ... there are no Uighurs in Albania, and we don't speak the Albanian language. ...

Were hoping that the United States government would recognize the mistake that it has done and accept, allow us to enter the United States. U.S. government captured us, U.S. government incarcerated us, locked us up in prison, and U.S. government said that we were not a threat and should be released.

Uighur-Americans came forward, made an offer to the United States government to accept us into Uighur-American society and community. They even went into the courts and contacted the lawyers and wrote a letter to the U.S. government officials asking them to consider releasing us into the United States. Unfortunately, it did not happen, a rather disappointing decision.

Otherwise, the Post ran a really interesting first person piece about Iraq, the Republic of Fear, which makes one fearful that Baghdad is slowly but surely turning into Beirut, circa 1980:

Today, the Americans are just one more militia lost in the anarchy. They, too, are killing Iraqis. ...

Sectarian and ethnic cleansing has since continued apace, as mixed neighborhoods are "purified." In Amriya, dead bodies are being found on the main street at a rate of three or five or seven a day. People are afraid to approach the bodies, or call for an ambulance or the police, for fear that they, too, will be found dead the following day. In Abu Ghraib, Dora, Amriya and other once-diverse neighborhoods, Shiites are being forced to leave. In Maalif and Shaab, Sunnis are being targeted.

The world wonders if Iraq is on the brink of civil war, while Iraqis fear calling it one, knowing the fate such a description would portend. In truth, the civil war started long before Samarra and long before the first uprisings. It started when U.S. troops arrived in Baghdad. It began when Sunnis discovered what they had lost, and Shiites learned what they had gained. And the worst is yet to come.

This made me remember reading a piece in Harper's that said that maybe the best thing for Iraq would be for the US to withdraw and let them have their full-fledged civil war. (It was by Edward Luttwak and was adapted from a piece in Foreign Policy, which can be found here) The version in Harper's ends like this:

...American forces continue to suffer casualties in combat against factions that should be confronting one another instead. Perhaps what the new Iraqi state needs in order to achieve stability is precisely a certain amount of civil war. Preventing it may impede a natural and perhaps very desirable political evolution. Americans would not today be happier if European Great Powers, horrified by the carnage of our own Civil War, had enforced an armistice between North and South that might endure still between two feeble states. ...

It's hard for me to know what to make of this idea. I'm not convinced that an all-out civil war would result in anything but a division of Iraq, or even worse, a regional war that would involve Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and probably Turkey as well. The latter is obviously a horrible idea, but I haven't decided how I feel about the former.

Finally, the atrocities in Haditha make me think that maybe Luttuk and Rosen are right and the US should just get out as soon as possible.

I can't get over this. I know that similar things happened in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and I know that we're talking about kids who have been put in an extremely dangerous and stressful situation, and that sometimes people just crack. But I just don't understand how someone can shoot a one-legged man in a wheelchair nine times. Or how someone can shoot a 1-year old baby. Say that again: a 1-year old baby. I just don't understand.

At some point on Nov. 19, Marines in an armored convoy arrived at Haditha's hospital. They placed the bodies of the victims in the garden of the hospital and left without explanation, said Mohammed al-Hadithi, one of the hospital officials who helped carry the bodies inside. By some accounts, some of the corpses were burnt.

The remains of the 24 lie today in a cemetery called Martyrs' Graveyard. Stray dogs scrounge in the deserted homes. "Democracy assassinated the family that was here," graffiti on one of the houses declared.

Monday, May 15, 2006

The New Republic has recently come out with an issue on Darfur (only some of which is available to non-subscribers), and they come out as a whole for American intervention in Darfur. Kaplan's piece, however, brings up the question of Iraq and asks why it is all right to intervene in Darfur but not in Iraq:

As their criticism of the particulars of the Iraq war has hardened into a broader indictment of U.S. foreign policy, the mostly progressive voices calling for action in Darfur have become caught in a bind of their own devising. Even as they demand intervention in Sudan, they excoriate Washington for employing U.S. military power without due respect to the opinion of the international community and against nations that pose no imminent threat to our own -- which is to say, precisely the terms under which U.S. power would have to be employed in the name of saving Darfur.

He then goes on to argue that neither the African Union nor the UN will intervene or is capable of intervening, leaving the US as the only capable, if not willing, power equipped to intervene.

To my mind, the main reason why I am for intervention in Darfur but was against it in Iraq can be summed up in a single word: genocide. It's happening in Darfur but wasn't happening in Iraq. Now had the Anfal campaign of the late 1980s been continuing, I would have been for intervention in Iraq. This is not to say that genocide should be the threshold for international intervention, but it would at least be a good start. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) responds similarly to Kaplan's jab against him:

Once President Bush and former Secretary of State Colin Powell used the word "genocide" to describe the carnage in Darfur, the United States and every other civilized nation had a moral imperative to act. Those who find it painful to explain the deception and misinformation preceding our invasion of Iraq should not hide behind the victims in Darfur.

As for whether or not the AU or UN could or would stop the genocide, the AU is already there but lacks a proper and muscular mandate that would allow their forces to protect civilians. As it is, they can only protect themselves. Likewise, when and if a UN force intervenes, it would be important for them to have a good mandate and be properly funded, because we know what happens to underfunded blue helmets without a real mandate. As it stands, there are 7,000 AU troops already in Darfur, which could be folded into a UN force; France has at least 1,000 troops in Chad already; and if the UK could be convinced to provide the 5,000 troops that they offered in 2004, then that would make a force of 13,000. Other nations like South Africa and Ghana could also donate more troops, and the US could help shoulder the financial and logistics costs of such an intervention.

While writing this, I've come across an interesting (and much more detailed) plan by the International Crisis Group To Save Darfur, which is similar to my idea:

Crisis Group has long contended that because AMIS has reached the outer limits of its competence, and a UN mission authorised today would not be fully ready to take over from it for some six months, a distinct and separate multinational force should be sent to Darfur to bridge that gap and help stabilise the immediate situation. We have argued, and continue to believe, that NATO would be best from a practical military point of view. Unfortunately, political opposition to this in Khartoum, within the AU and even perhaps within the Atlantic Alliance itself, means it is not achievable at this time.

What we now propose, therefore, is a compromise driven by the urgent need for a more robust force in Darfur. A militarily capable UN member state -- France seems most promising since it already has troops and aircraft in the area -- should offer to the Security Council to go now to Darfur, wearing blue helmets, as the lead nation in the first phase of the incoming UN mission. It could be joined from the outset by forces from one or two other militarily capable UN members (and would probably need to be if the desirable target of around 5,000 personnel for this force is to be achieved). This stabilisation force would be a self-contained, separately commanded UN mission with identified functional or geographic divisions of responsibility that would work beside AMIS and through a liaison unit at its headquarters until arrangements were in place for a 1 October transition to the full UN mission. That full mission would need to be recruited from the best AMIS elements as well as a wider circle of Asian and other member states -- no easy task at a time when several large UN peacekeeping missions in Africa and elsewhere have exhausted the capabilities of many contribution candidates.

The U.S. and other NATO states should respond generously and quickly to requests from it or AMIS to provide logistical help as well as regular access to satellite imagery, air mobility and close air support, especially to deter or react to egregious movements of men or heavy weapons in the border area.

They finish by coming up with a list of recommendations for each of the major parties involved (with the exception of the belligerent parties):

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the African Union:

1. Request the immediate deployment of a UN-mandated stabilisation force to help bolster the AMIS troops and focus on the Chad-Sudan border and the Tawila-Graida corridor.

2. Seek quick negotiation of a single, enhanced ceasefire document to remove the ambiguities of the existing overlapping agreements.

3. Begin immediately to map the location of forces in Darfur so as to manage and enforce the ceasefire better.

5. Improve the reporting mechanisms and procedures for monitoring ceasefire violations and urgently revive and upgrade the compliance and sanctions mechanisms of the ceasefire.

6. Negotiate a series of humanitarian ground rules, in collaboration with the UN, to help hold the parties accountable for the protection of humanitarian operations in their respective areas.

To the United Nations Security Council:

7. Authorise a two-phase intervention in Darfur under Chapter Seven of the Charter, with the following elements:

(a) for the first phase, to be accomplished within a month, a lead nation would serve as the advance element of the full UN mission by sending the bulk of an initial 5,000 troops to Darfur, with three main stabilisation tasks:

i. interdiction of military activities across the Chad-Darfur border;

ii. protection of civilians in Darfur, primarily in the Tawilla-Graida corridor; and

iii. rapid-reaction support of AMIS forces until the transition to a full-fledged UN peace support operation in October 2006.

(b) for the second phase, immediate planning for a peace support operation of some 15,000 troops -- none of whom should be diverted from the mission of the existing UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) -- with a mandate emphasising civilian protection, ceasefire enforcement and monitoring of the Chad-Sudan border, to take over from AMIS as of 1 October 2006.

8. Strengthen the existing sanctions regime by implementing the recommendations in the 30 January 2006 report of the Panel of Experts.

9. Authorise the Secretariat's peacekeeping department (DPKO) to begin planning on an urgent basis and together with the AU both phases of this operation, with priority tasks to include:

(a) identifying areas for early cooperation in Darfur, such as immediate deployment of UN experts to help support the establishment of a functioning ceasefire commission secretariat and the deployment of human rights monitors and translators, including women, to help improve the reporting capacity of AMIS; and

(b) identifying the lead nation to deploy in the initial phase to support AMIS by performing the tasks set out in recommendation 7(a) above and serve as the advance element of the full UN mission.

To Donor Governments:

10. Convene an early pledging conference to ensure that AMIS is fully funded until the UN mission can take over in October 2006.

To the U.S., the EU and its member states and others with a strong interest in regional peace and stability:

11. Undertake major diplomatic efforts to:

(a) persuade Sudan to accept and the AU to confirm transition of AMIS into a strong UN peacekeeping mission as of 1 October 2006 and request in the interim dispatch of an advance force of some 5,000 blue-helmets to assist AMIS by performing essential stabilisation tasks;

(b) persuade the Security Council to authorise a mission of some 15,000, including the strongest AMIS elements and with a strong Chapter VII mandate focused on civilian protection; and

(c) identify the lead nation to contribute the bulk of the advance element to assist AMIS and perform essential stabilisation tasks immediately upon Security Council authorisation, and be prepared to help with all necessary material and logistical support.

12. Concurrently with efforts to strengthen international forces on the ground, pursue the other elements of a coordinated three-part strategy to resolve the Darfur conflict by:

(a) reinforcing AU efforts to negotiate an enhanced ceasefire and a political settlement at Abuja, including by naming special envoys; and

(b) seeking accountability and an end to impunity by enforcing the Security Council's sanction regime and supporting human rights monitoring mechanisms and the work of the ICC.

Monday, May 08, 2006

An article in the Post reports today that Iranian President Ahmadinejad sent a letter to President Bush in order to propose "new solutions for getting out of international problems and the current fragile situation in the world." It mentions the quote put forth by the Times that Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be "wiped off the map." Since this comment was reported on, it has been used as a reason why Iran should not have nuclear weapons. I've been somewhat skeptical about the translation, and as it turns out, there is some disagreement about what was actually said. This disagreement has pitted Christopher Hitchens against Juan Cole, the latter being the only one of the two who actually speaks Farsi. A good summary of the online fight can be found here.

The actual sentence in question seems to be this: "een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad." I don't speak Farsi, but several of my colleagues are Iranian, and I've sent them the text to see what they think about it. The only word I can recognize is qods which is Farsi for al Quds, which is Jerusalem in English. Cole's translation is "the Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem must [vanish from] from the page of time." As it turns out, the Israeli group Memri offers a translation that is very similar to Cole's ("eliminated from the pages of history").

As it turns out, after the comments, the Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki denied the remarks:

Mottaki also denied during a press conference in Brussels that Tehran wanted to see Israel "wiped off the map."

"Nobody can remove a country from the map. This is a misunderstanding in Europe of what our president mentioned," he said. "How is it possible to remove a country from the map? He is talking about the regime. We do not recognize legally this regime."

Another denial came on CNN's Late Edition from Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh:

SOLTANIEH: The supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran has announced, more than two years, and few cases, the Western media have reflected to public of the world, that if the divine religions -- followers of the divine religions, Jews, Christians and Muslims, in that area follow a referendum, democratic referendum, and are one (ph) with homeless Palestinians, Iranian government and Iranian people would respect their decision.

Therefore, these are fabricated news that they are threatening and using this as an excuse for the military aggression or the aggressive policy. [...]

BLITZER: I have to wrap this up, but I want to get your response to this issue of Israel because it's become such a prominent issue in this whole discussion over nuclear plans that Iran may or may not have. This is what the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said on October 26 at that World Without Zionism conference.

He said, "Israel must be wiped off the map of the world, and god willing, with the force of god behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionists."

You understand why people in the West, especially here in the United States, are so concerned about your program, your nuclear program, given those kinds of direct threats against Israel, which happens to be a strong ally of the United States.

SOLTANIEH: I want to very briefly remind you that the policy of Islamic Republic of Iran and according to spirit and letter of our constitution is against any sort of school of thought or regime such as apartheid, Zionism, racism, and this is a matter of principle.

Therefore, what you are talking about as apartheid was disappeared and it could not be accepted by civilized world, this Zionism and aggression of racism is also condemned. [...]

BLITZER: Does your support for the removal of Zionism mean you want to see Israel destroyed?

SOLTANIEH: I have already explained to you and reflected to you the policy echoed by our supreme leader.

It means that if in that region, the divine religion followers of the Jews, Christians and Muslims, that all three are very respectful -- and we have Jews in Iran, which are peacefully living and they are represented in our parliament, they are fully respected -- if they come with the Palestinians, homeless Palestinians, to come and through following the democratic process will decide on a government and live in peace as they were living a thousand years of coexistence of these divine religions, Iran will support because we are looking for and we support peaceful settlement of the whole issue and peaceful coexistence of these divine religions in the Middle East. Let's hope for the peace.

BLITZER: But should there be a state of Israel?

SOLTANIEH: I think I've already answered to you. If Israel is a synonym and will give the indication of Zionism mentality, no.

But if you are going to conclude that we have said the people there have to be removed or we they have to be massacred or so, this is fabricated, unfortunate selective approach to what the mentality and policy of Islamic Republic of Iran is. I have to correct, and I did so.

So it seems that the statements by Ahmadinejad, or at the very least official Iranian policy, is much more nuanced than the Western media would have us believe. Furthermore, it is important to remember that Ahmadinejad does not control Iranian foreign policy. In an interesting article in the New York Review about Iran and the bomb, Christopher de Bellaigue has this to say:

Iran's enmity toward Israel is more nuanced than Ahmadinejad's statements suggest. The President's declarations that Israel should be "wiped off the map," and that the Holocaust is a "myth," understandably aroused fears that Iran might be considering an attack on Israel. But Iran's senior civilian and military officials have insisted that Iran will strike Israel only if Israel strikes first. More significantly, the President and supreme leader have both reiterated Iran's longstanding demand for a referendum on the status of Israel that would involve all Palestinian refugees. This official position would not seem to be consistent with an ambition to destroy Israel by force, least of all by using nuclear arms, which would endanger the very Palestinians whom the Iranians claim to be protecting. Several senior Iranian officials, including Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president who heads a powerful arbitration council in Tehran, have not disguised their irritation with the President's comments. But Ahmadinejad has benefited from the furor. By raising his prestige among hard-line Islamists around the world, the President has made it harder for his domestic opponents, who include Rafsanjani, to undermine him.

I will post the English translation later this week, once my Iranian colleagues have had the chance to get back to me.

Monday, May 29, 2006

Here are a few interesting links that I've come across in the last few days:

A story from ABC about Chinese Muslims wrongly imprisoned in Guantanamo and then finally released after 4.5 years. They couldn't be sent to China since the government there persecutes Uighurs, and despite being found innocent of any charges (NLEC, or No Longer Enemy Combattant, in Guantanamo Bay terminology - Mr Kafka could not have made this up if he had tried), being put away by the Americans for 4.5 years is enough to garner a bad reputation. So apparently, no country would take them, the US included, with the single and solitary exception of Albania:

We are very pleased that the Albanian government and the Albanian people opened their hearts and welcomed us. Despite the fact that all the strong, powerful, democratic countries are able and capable of accepting us, they did not do that. We are having some problems ... there are no Uighurs in Albania, and we don't speak the Albanian language. ...

Were hoping that the United States government would recognize the mistake that it has done and accept, allow us to enter the United States. U.S. government captured us, U.S. government incarcerated us, locked us up in prison, and U.S. government said that we were not a threat and should be released.

Uighur-Americans came forward, made an offer to the United States government to accept us into Uighur-American society and community. They even went into the courts and contacted the lawyers and wrote a letter to the U.S. government officials asking them to consider releasing us into the United States. Unfortunately, it did not happen, a rather disappointing decision.

Otherwise, the Post ran a really interesting first person piece about Iraq, the Republic of Fear, which makes one fearful that Baghdad is slowly but surely turning into Beirut, circa 1980:

Today, the Americans are just one more militia lost in the anarchy. They, too, are killing Iraqis. ...

Sectarian and ethnic cleansing has since continued apace, as mixed neighborhoods are "purified." In Amriya, dead bodies are being found on the main street at a rate of three or five or seven a day. People are afraid to approach the bodies, or call for an ambulance or the police, for fear that they, too, will be found dead the following day. In Abu Ghraib, Dora, Amriya and other once-diverse neighborhoods, Shiites are being forced to leave. In Maalif and Shaab, Sunnis are being targeted.

The world wonders if Iraq is on the brink of civil war, while Iraqis fear calling it one, knowing the fate such a description would portend. In truth, the civil war started long before Samarra and long before the first uprisings. It started when U.S. troops arrived in Baghdad. It began when Sunnis discovered what they had lost, and Shiites learned what they had gained. And the worst is yet to come.

This made me remember reading a piece in Harper's that said that maybe the best thing for Iraq would be for the US to withdraw and let them have their full-fledged civil war. (It was by Edward Luttwak and was adapted from a piece in Foreign Policy, which can be found here) The version in Harper's ends like this:

...American forces continue to suffer casualties in combat against factions that should be confronting one another instead. Perhaps what the new Iraqi state needs in order to achieve stability is precisely a certain amount of civil war. Preventing it may impede a natural and perhaps very desirable political evolution. Americans would not today be happier if European Great Powers, horrified by the carnage of our own Civil War, had enforced an armistice between North and South that might endure still between two feeble states. ...

It's hard for me to know what to make of this idea. I'm not convinced that an all-out civil war would result in anything but a division of Iraq, or even worse, a regional war that would involve Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and probably Turkey as well. The latter is obviously a horrible idea, but I haven't decided how I feel about the former.

Finally, the atrocities in Haditha make me think that maybe Luttuk and Rosen are right and the US should just get out as soon as possible.

I can't get over this. I know that similar things happened in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and I know that we're talking about kids who have been put in an extremely dangerous and stressful situation, and that sometimes people just crack. But I just don't understand how someone can shoot a one-legged man in a wheelchair nine times. Or how someone can shoot a 1-year old baby. Say that again: a 1-year old baby. I just don't understand.

At some point on Nov. 19, Marines in an armored convoy arrived at Haditha's hospital. They placed the bodies of the victims in the garden of the hospital and left without explanation, said Mohammed al-Hadithi, one of the hospital officials who helped carry the bodies inside. By some accounts, some of the corpses were burnt.

The remains of the 24 lie today in a cemetery called Martyrs' Graveyard. Stray dogs scrounge in the deserted homes. "Democracy assassinated the family that was here," graffiti on one of the houses declared.

Monday, May 15, 2006

The New Republic has recently come out with an issue on Darfur (only some of which is available to non-subscribers), and they come out as a whole for American intervention in Darfur. Kaplan's piece, however, brings up the question of Iraq and asks why it is all right to intervene in Darfur but not in Iraq:

As their criticism of the particulars of the Iraq war has hardened into a broader indictment of U.S. foreign policy, the mostly progressive voices calling for action in Darfur have become caught in a bind of their own devising. Even as they demand intervention in Sudan, they excoriate Washington for employing U.S. military power without due respect to the opinion of the international community and against nations that pose no imminent threat to our own -- which is to say, precisely the terms under which U.S. power would have to be employed in the name of saving Darfur.

He then goes on to argue that neither the African Union nor the UN will intervene or is capable of intervening, leaving the US as the only capable, if not willing, power equipped to intervene.

To my mind, the main reason why I am for intervention in Darfur but was against it in Iraq can be summed up in a single word: genocide. It's happening in Darfur but wasn't happening in Iraq. Now had the Anfal campaign of the late 1980s been continuing, I would have been for intervention in Iraq. This is not to say that genocide should be the threshold for international intervention, but it would at least be a good start. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) responds similarly to Kaplan's jab against him:

Once President Bush and former Secretary of State Colin Powell used the word "genocide" to describe the carnage in Darfur, the United States and every other civilized nation had a moral imperative to act. Those who find it painful to explain the deception and misinformation preceding our invasion of Iraq should not hide behind the victims in Darfur.

As for whether or not the AU or UN could or would stop the genocide, the AU is already there but lacks a proper and muscular mandate that would allow their forces to protect civilians. As it is, they can only protect themselves. Likewise, when and if a UN force intervenes, it would be important for them to have a good mandate and be properly funded, because we know what happens to underfunded blue helmets without a real mandate. As it stands, there are 7,000 AU troops already in Darfur, which could be folded into a UN force; France has at least 1,000 troops in Chad already; and if the UK could be convinced to provide the 5,000 troops that they offered in 2004, then that would make a force of 13,000. Other nations like South Africa and Ghana could also donate more troops, and the US could help shoulder the financial and logistics costs of such an intervention.

While writing this, I've come across an interesting (and much more detailed) plan by the International Crisis Group To Save Darfur, which is similar to my idea:

Crisis Group has long contended that because AMIS has reached the outer limits of its competence, and a UN mission authorised today would not be fully ready to take over from it for some six months, a distinct and separate multinational force should be sent to Darfur to bridge that gap and help stabilise the immediate situation. We have argued, and continue to believe, that NATO would be best from a practical military point of view. Unfortunately, political opposition to this in Khartoum, within the AU and even perhaps within the Atlantic Alliance itself, means it is not achievable at this time.

What we now propose, therefore, is a compromise driven by the urgent need for a more robust force in Darfur. A militarily capable UN member state -- France seems most promising since it already has troops and aircraft in the area -- should offer to the Security Council to go now to Darfur, wearing blue helmets, as the lead nation in the first phase of the incoming UN mission. It could be joined from the outset by forces from one or two other militarily capable UN members (and would probably need to be if the desirable target of around 5,000 personnel for this force is to be achieved). This stabilisation force would be a self-contained, separately commanded UN mission with identified functional or geographic divisions of responsibility that would work beside AMIS and through a liaison unit at its headquarters until arrangements were in place for a 1 October transition to the full UN mission. That full mission would need to be recruited from the best AMIS elements as well as a wider circle of Asian and other member states -- no easy task at a time when several large UN peacekeeping missions in Africa and elsewhere have exhausted the capabilities of many contribution candidates.

The U.S. and other NATO states should respond generously and quickly to requests from it or AMIS to provide logistical help as well as regular access to satellite imagery, air mobility and close air support, especially to deter or react to egregious movements of men or heavy weapons in the border area.

They finish by coming up with a list of recommendations for each of the major parties involved (with the exception of the belligerent parties):

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the African Union:

1. Request the immediate deployment of a UN-mandated stabilisation force to help bolster the AMIS troops and focus on the Chad-Sudan border and the Tawila-Graida corridor.

2. Seek quick negotiation of a single, enhanced ceasefire document to remove the ambiguities of the existing overlapping agreements.

3. Begin immediately to map the location of forces in Darfur so as to manage and enforce the ceasefire better.

5. Improve the reporting mechanisms and procedures for monitoring ceasefire violations and urgently revive and upgrade the compliance and sanctions mechanisms of the ceasefire.

6. Negotiate a series of humanitarian ground rules, in collaboration with the UN, to help hold the parties accountable for the protection of humanitarian operations in their respective areas.

To the United Nations Security Council:

7. Authorise a two-phase intervention in Darfur under Chapter Seven of the Charter, with the following elements:

(a) for the first phase, to be accomplished within a month, a lead nation would serve as the advance element of the full UN mission by sending the bulk of an initial 5,000 troops to Darfur, with three main stabilisation tasks:

i. interdiction of military activities across the Chad-Darfur border;

ii. protection of civilians in Darfur, primarily in the Tawilla-Graida corridor; and

iii. rapid-reaction support of AMIS forces until the transition to a full-fledged UN peace support operation in October 2006.

(b) for the second phase, immediate planning for a peace support operation of some 15,000 troops -- none of whom should be diverted from the mission of the existing UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) -- with a mandate emphasising civilian protection, ceasefire enforcement and monitoring of the Chad-Sudan border, to take over from AMIS as of 1 October 2006.

8. Strengthen the existing sanctions regime by implementing the recommendations in the 30 January 2006 report of the Panel of Experts.

9. Authorise the Secretariat's peacekeeping department (DPKO) to begin planning on an urgent basis and together with the AU both phases of this operation, with priority tasks to include:

(a) identifying areas for early cooperation in Darfur, such as immediate deployment of UN experts to help support the establishment of a functioning ceasefire commission secretariat and the deployment of human rights monitors and translators, including women, to help improve the reporting capacity of AMIS; and

(b) identifying the lead nation to deploy in the initial phase to support AMIS by performing the tasks set out in recommendation 7(a) above and serve as the advance element of the full UN mission.

To Donor Governments:

10. Convene an early pledging conference to ensure that AMIS is fully funded until the UN mission can take over in October 2006.

To the U.S., the EU and its member states and others with a strong interest in regional peace and stability:

11. Undertake major diplomatic efforts to:

(a) persuade Sudan to accept and the AU to confirm transition of AMIS into a strong UN peacekeeping mission as of 1 October 2006 and request in the interim dispatch of an advance force of some 5,000 blue-helmets to assist AMIS by performing essential stabilisation tasks;

(b) persuade the Security Council to authorise a mission of some 15,000, including the strongest AMIS elements and with a strong Chapter VII mandate focused on civilian protection; and

(c) identify the lead nation to contribute the bulk of the advance element to assist AMIS and perform essential stabilisation tasks immediately upon Security Council authorisation, and be prepared to help with all necessary material and logistical support.

12. Concurrently with efforts to strengthen international forces on the ground, pursue the other elements of a coordinated three-part strategy to resolve the Darfur conflict by:

(a) reinforcing AU efforts to negotiate an enhanced ceasefire and a political settlement at Abuja, including by naming special envoys; and

(b) seeking accountability and an end to impunity by enforcing the Security Council's sanction regime and supporting human rights monitoring mechanisms and the work of the ICC.

Monday, May 08, 2006

An article in the Post reports today that Iranian President Ahmadinejad sent a letter to President Bush in order to propose "new solutions for getting out of international problems and the current fragile situation in the world." It mentions the quote put forth by the Times that Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be "wiped off the map." Since this comment was reported on, it has been used as a reason why Iran should not have nuclear weapons. I've been somewhat skeptical about the translation, and as it turns out, there is some disagreement about what was actually said. This disagreement has pitted Christopher Hitchens against Juan Cole, the latter being the only one of the two who actually speaks Farsi. A good summary of the online fight can be found here.

The actual sentence in question seems to be this: "een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad." I don't speak Farsi, but several of my colleagues are Iranian, and I've sent them the text to see what they think about it. The only word I can recognize is qods which is Farsi for al Quds, which is Jerusalem in English. Cole's translation is "the Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem must [vanish from] from the page of time." As it turns out, the Israeli group Memri offers a translation that is very similar to Cole's ("eliminated from the pages of history").

As it turns out, after the comments, the Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki denied the remarks:

Mottaki also denied during a press conference in Brussels that Tehran wanted to see Israel "wiped off the map."

"Nobody can remove a country from the map. This is a misunderstanding in Europe of what our president mentioned," he said. "How is it possible to remove a country from the map? He is talking about the regime. We do not recognize legally this regime."

Another denial came on CNN's Late Edition from Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh:

SOLTANIEH: The supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran has announced, more than two years, and few cases, the Western media have reflected to public of the world, that if the divine religions -- followers of the divine religions, Jews, Christians and Muslims, in that area follow a referendum, democratic referendum, and are one (ph) with homeless Palestinians, Iranian government and Iranian people would respect their decision.

Therefore, these are fabricated news that they are threatening and using this as an excuse for the military aggression or the aggressive policy. [...]

BLITZER: I have to wrap this up, but I want to get your response to this issue of Israel because it's become such a prominent issue in this whole discussion over nuclear plans that Iran may or may not have. This is what the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said on October 26 at that World Without Zionism conference.

He said, "Israel must be wiped off the map of the world, and god willing, with the force of god behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionists."

You understand why people in the West, especially here in the United States, are so concerned about your program, your nuclear program, given those kinds of direct threats against Israel, which happens to be a strong ally of the United States.

SOLTANIEH: I want to very briefly remind you that the policy of Islamic Republic of Iran and according to spirit and letter of our constitution is against any sort of school of thought or regime such as apartheid, Zionism, racism, and this is a matter of principle.

Therefore, what you are talking about as apartheid was disappeared and it could not be accepted by civilized world, this Zionism and aggression of racism is also condemned. [...]

BLITZER: Does your support for the removal of Zionism mean you want to see Israel destroyed?

SOLTANIEH: I have already explained to you and reflected to you the policy echoed by our supreme leader.

It means that if in that region, the divine religion followers of the Jews, Christians and Muslims, that all three are very respectful -- and we have Jews in Iran, which are peacefully living and they are represented in our parliament, they are fully respected -- if they come with the Palestinians, homeless Palestinians, to come and through following the democratic process will decide on a government and live in peace as they were living a thousand years of coexistence of these divine religions, Iran will support because we are looking for and we support peaceful settlement of the whole issue and peaceful coexistence of these divine religions in the Middle East. Let's hope for the peace.

BLITZER: But should there be a state of Israel?

SOLTANIEH: I think I've already answered to you. If Israel is a synonym and will give the indication of Zionism mentality, no.

But if you are going to conclude that we have said the people there have to be removed or we they have to be massacred or so, this is fabricated, unfortunate selective approach to what the mentality and policy of Islamic Republic of Iran is. I have to correct, and I did so.

So it seems that the statements by Ahmadinejad, or at the very least official Iranian policy, is much more nuanced than the Western media would have us believe. Furthermore, it is important to remember that Ahmadinejad does not control Iranian foreign policy. In an interesting article in the New York Review about Iran and the bomb, Christopher de Bellaigue has this to say:

Iran's enmity toward Israel is more nuanced than Ahmadinejad's statements suggest. The President's declarations that Israel should be "wiped off the map," and that the Holocaust is a "myth," understandably aroused fears that Iran might be considering an attack on Israel. But Iran's senior civilian and military officials have insisted that Iran will strike Israel only if Israel strikes first. More significantly, the President and supreme leader have both reiterated Iran's longstanding demand for a referendum on the status of Israel that would involve all Palestinian refugees. This official position would not seem to be consistent with an ambition to destroy Israel by force, least of all by using nuclear arms, which would endanger the very Palestinians whom the Iranians claim to be protecting. Several senior Iranian officials, including Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president who heads a powerful arbitration council in Tehran, have not disguised their irritation with the President's comments. But Ahmadinejad has benefited from the furor. By raising his prestige among hard-line Islamists around the world, the President has made it harder for his domestic opponents, who include Rafsanjani, to undermine him.

I will post the English translation later this week, once my Iranian colleagues have had the chance to get back to me.

Monday, May 29, 2006

Here are a few interesting links that I've come across in the last few days:

A story from ABC about Chinese Muslims wrongly imprisoned in Guantanamo and then finally released after 4.5 years. They couldn't be sent to China since the government there persecutes Uighurs, and despite being found innocent of any charges (NLEC, or No Longer Enemy Combattant, in Guantanamo Bay terminology - Mr Kafka could not have made this up if he had tried), being put away by the Americans for 4.5 years is enough to garner a bad reputation. So apparently, no country would take them, the US included, with the single and solitary exception of Albania:

We are very pleased that the Albanian government and the Albanian people opened their hearts and welcomed us. Despite the fact that all the strong, powerful, democratic countries are able and capable of accepting us, they did not do that. We are having some problems ... there are no Uighurs in Albania, and we don't speak the Albanian language. ...

Were hoping that the United States government would recognize the mistake that it has done and accept, allow us to enter the United States. U.S. government captured us, U.S. government incarcerated us, locked us up in prison, and U.S. government said that we were not a threat and should be released.

Uighur-Americans came forward, made an offer to the United States government to accept us into Uighur-American society and community. They even went into the courts and contacted the lawyers and wrote a letter to the U.S. government officials asking them to consider releasing us into the United States. Unfortunately, it did not happen, a rather disappointing decision.

Otherwise, the Post ran a really interesting first person piece about Iraq, the Republic of Fear, which makes one fearful that Baghdad is slowly but surely turning into Beirut, circa 1980:

Today, the Americans are just one more militia lost in the anarchy. They, too, are killing Iraqis. ...

Sectarian and ethnic cleansing has since continued apace, as mixed neighborhoods are "purified." In Amriya, dead bodies are being found on the main street at a rate of three or five or seven a day. People are afraid to approach the bodies, or call for an ambulance or the police, for fear that they, too, will be found dead the following day. In Abu Ghraib, Dora, Amriya and other once-diverse neighborhoods, Shiites are being forced to leave. In Maalif and Shaab, Sunnis are being targeted.

The world wonders if Iraq is on the brink of civil war, while Iraqis fear calling it one, knowing the fate such a description would portend. In truth, the civil war started long before Samarra and long before the first uprisings. It started when U.S. troops arrived in Baghdad. It began when Sunnis discovered what they had lost, and Shiites learned what they had gained. And the worst is yet to come.

This made me remember reading a piece in Harper's that said that maybe the best thing for Iraq would be for the US to withdraw and let them have their full-fledged civil war. (It was by Edward Luttwak and was adapted from a piece in Foreign Policy, which can be found here) The version in Harper's ends like this:

...American forces continue to suffer casualties in combat against factions that should be confronting one another instead. Perhaps what the new Iraqi state needs in order to achieve stability is precisely a certain amount of civil war. Preventing it may impede a natural and perhaps very desirable political evolution. Americans would not today be happier if European Great Powers, horrified by the carnage of our own Civil War, had enforced an armistice between North and South that might endure still between two feeble states. ...

It's hard for me to know what to make of this idea. I'm not convinced that an all-out civil war would result in anything but a division of Iraq, or even worse, a regional war that would involve Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and probably Turkey as well. The latter is obviously a horrible idea, but I haven't decided how I feel about the former.

Finally, the atrocities in Haditha make me think that maybe Luttuk and Rosen are right and the US should just get out as soon as possible.

I can't get over this. I know that similar things happened in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and I know that we're talking about kids who have been put in an extremely dangerous and stressful situation, and that sometimes people just crack. But I just don't understand how someone can shoot a one-legged man in a wheelchair nine times. Or how someone can shoot a 1-year old baby. Say that again: a 1-year old baby. I just don't understand.

At some point on Nov. 19, Marines in an armored convoy arrived at Haditha's hospital. They placed the bodies of the victims in the garden of the hospital and left without explanation, said Mohammed al-Hadithi, one of the hospital officials who helped carry the bodies inside. By some accounts, some of the corpses were burnt.

The remains of the 24 lie today in a cemetery called Martyrs' Graveyard. Stray dogs scrounge in the deserted homes. "Democracy assassinated the family that was here," graffiti on one of the houses declared.

Monday, May 15, 2006

The New Republic has recently come out with an issue on Darfur (only some of which is available to non-subscribers), and they come out as a whole for American intervention in Darfur. Kaplan's piece, however, brings up the question of Iraq and asks why it is all right to intervene in Darfur but not in Iraq:

As their criticism of the particulars of the Iraq war has hardened into a broader indictment of U.S. foreign policy, the mostly progressive voices calling for action in Darfur have become caught in a bind of their own devising. Even as they demand intervention in Sudan, they excoriate Washington for employing U.S. military power without due respect to the opinion of the international community and against nations that pose no imminent threat to our own -- which is to say, precisely the terms under which U.S. power would have to be employed in the name of saving Darfur.

He then goes on to argue that neither the African Union nor the UN will intervene or is capable of intervening, leaving the US as the only capable, if not willing, power equipped to intervene.

To my mind, the main reason why I am for intervention in Darfur but was against it in Iraq can be summed up in a single word: genocide. It's happening in Darfur but wasn't happening in Iraq. Now had the Anfal campaign of the late 1980s been continuing, I would have been for intervention in Iraq. This is not to say that genocide should be the threshold for international intervention, but it would at least be a good start. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) responds similarly to Kaplan's jab against him:

Once President Bush and former Secretary of State Colin Powell used the word "genocide" to describe the carnage in Darfur, the United States and every other civilized nation had a moral imperative to act. Those who find it painful to explain the deception and misinformation preceding our invasion of Iraq should not hide behind the victims in Darfur.

As for whether or not the AU or UN could or would stop the genocide, the AU is already there but lacks a proper and muscular mandate that would allow their forces to protect civilians. As it is, they can only protect themselves. Likewise, when and if a UN force intervenes, it would be important for them to have a good mandate and be properly funded, because we know what happens to underfunded blue helmets without a real mandate. As it stands, there are 7,000 AU troops already in Darfur, which could be folded into a UN force; France has at least 1,000 troops in Chad already; and if the UK could be convinced to provide the 5,000 troops that they offered in 2004, then that would make a force of 13,000. Other nations like South Africa and Ghana could also donate more troops, and the US could help shoulder the financial and logistics costs of such an intervention.

While writing this, I've come across an interesting (and much more detailed) plan by the International Crisis Group To Save Darfur, which is similar to my idea:

Crisis Group has long contended that because AMIS has reached the outer limits of its competence, and a UN mission authorised today would not be fully ready to take over from it for some six months, a distinct and separate multinational force should be sent to Darfur to bridge that gap and help stabilise the immediate situation. We have argued, and continue to believe, that NATO would be best from a practical military point of view. Unfortunately, political opposition to this in Khartoum, within the AU and even perhaps within the Atlantic Alliance itself, means it is not achievable at this time.

What we now propose, therefore, is a compromise driven by the urgent need for a more robust force in Darfur. A militarily capable UN member state -- France seems most promising since it already has troops and aircraft in the area -- should offer to the Security Council to go now to Darfur, wearing blue helmets, as the lead nation in the first phase of the incoming UN mission. It could be joined from the outset by forces from one or two other militarily capable UN members (and would probably need to be if the desirable target of around 5,000 personnel for this force is to be achieved). This stabilisation force would be a self-contained, separately commanded UN mission with identified functional or geographic divisions of responsibility that would work beside AMIS and through a liaison unit at its headquarters until arrangements were in place for a 1 October transition to the full UN mission. That full mission would need to be recruited from the best AMIS elements as well as a wider circle of Asian and other member states -- no easy task at a time when several large UN peacekeeping missions in Africa and elsewhere have exhausted the capabilities of many contribution candidates.

The U.S. and other NATO states should respond generously and quickly to requests from it or AMIS to provide logistical help as well as regular access to satellite imagery, air mobility and close air support, especially to deter or react to egregious movements of men or heavy weapons in the border area.

They finish by coming up with a list of recommendations for each of the major parties involved (with the exception of the belligerent parties):

RECOMMENDATIONS

To the African Union:

1. Request the immediate deployment of a UN-mandated stabilisation force to help bolster the AMIS troops and focus on the Chad-Sudan border and the Tawila-Graida corridor.

2. Seek quick negotiation of a single, enhanced ceasefire document to remove the ambiguities of the existing overlapping agreements.

3. Begin immediately to map the location of forces in Darfur so as to manage and enforce the ceasefire better.

5. Improve the reporting mechanisms and procedures for monitoring ceasefire violations and urgently revive and upgrade the compliance and sanctions mechanisms of the ceasefire.

6. Negotiate a series of humanitarian ground rules, in collaboration with the UN, to help hold the parties accountable for the protection of humanitarian operations in their respective areas.

To the United Nations Security Council:

7. Authorise a two-phase intervention in Darfur under Chapter Seven of the Charter, with the following elements:

(a) for the first phase, to be accomplished within a month, a lead nation would serve as the advance element of the full UN mission by sending the bulk of an initial 5,000 troops to Darfur, with three main stabilisation tasks:

i. interdiction of military activities across the Chad-Darfur border;

ii. protection of civilians in Darfur, primarily in the Tawilla-Graida corridor; and

iii. rapid-reaction support of AMIS forces until the transition to a full-fledged UN peace support operation in October 2006.

(b) for the second phase, immediate planning for a peace support operation of some 15,000 troops -- none of whom should be diverted from the mission of the existing UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) -- with a mandate emphasising civilian protection, ceasefire enforcement and monitoring of the Chad-Sudan border, to take over from AMIS as of 1 October 2006.

8. Strengthen the existing sanctions regime by implementing the recommendations in the 30 January 2006 report of the Panel of Experts.

9. Authorise the Secretariat's peacekeeping department (DPKO) to begin planning on an urgent basis and together with the AU both phases of this operation, with priority tasks to include:

(a) identifying areas for early cooperation in Darfur, such as immediate deployment of UN experts to help support the establishment of a functioning ceasefire commission secretariat and the deployment of human rights monitors and translators, including women, to help improve the reporting capacity of AMIS; and

(b) identifying the lead nation to deploy in the initial phase to support AMIS by performing the tasks set out in recommendation 7(a) above and serve as the advance element of the full UN mission.

To Donor Governments:

10. Convene an early pledging conference to ensure that AMIS is fully funded until the UN mission can take over in October 2006.

To the U.S., the EU and its member states and others with a strong interest in regional peace and stability:

11. Undertake major diplomatic efforts to:

(a) persuade Sudan to accept and the AU to confirm transition of AMIS into a strong UN peacekeeping mission as of 1 October 2006 and request in the interim dispatch of an advance force of some 5,000 blue-helmets to assist AMIS by performing essential stabilisation tasks;

(b) persuade the Security Council to authorise a mission of some 15,000, including the strongest AMIS elements and with a strong Chapter VII mandate focused on civilian protection; and

(c) identify the lead nation to contribute the bulk of the advance element to assist AMIS and perform essential stabilisation tasks immediately upon Security Council authorisation, and be prepared to help with all necessary material and logistical support.

12. Concurrently with efforts to strengthen international forces on the ground, pursue the other elements of a coordinated three-part strategy to resolve the Darfur conflict by:

(a) reinforcing AU efforts to negotiate an enhanced ceasefire and a political settlement at Abuja, including by naming special envoys; and

(b) seeking accountability and an end to impunity by enforcing the Security Council's sanction regime and supporting human rights monitoring mechanisms and the work of the ICC.

Monday, May 08, 2006

An article in the Post reports today that Iranian President Ahmadinejad sent a letter to President Bush in order to propose "new solutions for getting out of international problems and the current fragile situation in the world." It mentions the quote put forth by the Times that Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be "wiped off the map." Since this comment was reported on, it has been used as a reason why Iran should not have nuclear weapons. I've been somewhat skeptical about the translation, and as it turns out, there is some disagreement about what was actually said. This disagreement has pitted Christopher Hitchens against Juan Cole, the latter being the only one of the two who actually speaks Farsi. A good summary of the online fight can be found here.

The actual sentence in question seems to be this: "een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad." I don't speak Farsi, but several of my colleagues are Iranian, and I've sent them the text to see what they think about it. The only word I can recognize is qods which is Farsi for al Quds, which is Jerusalem in English. Cole's translation is "the Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem must [vanish from] from the page of time." As it turns out, the Israeli group Memri offers a translation that is very similar to Cole's ("eliminated from the pages of history").

As it turns out, after the comments, the Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki denied the remarks:

Mottaki also denied during a press conference in Brussels that Tehran wanted to see Israel "wiped off the map."

"Nobody can remove a country from the map. This is a misunderstanding in Europe of what our president mentioned," he said. "How is it possible to remove a country from the map? He is talking about the regime. We do not recognize legally this regime."

Another denial came on CNN's Late Edition from Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh:

SOLTANIEH: The supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran has announced, more than two years, and few cases, the Western media have reflected to public of the world, that if the divine religions -- followers of the divine religions, Jews, Christians and Muslims, in that area follow a referendum, democratic referendum, and are one (ph) with homeless Palestinians, Iranian government and Iranian people would respect their decision.

Therefore, these are fabricated news that they are threatening and using this as an excuse for the military aggression or the aggressive policy. [...]

BLITZER: I have to wrap this up, but I want to get your response to this issue of Israel because it's become such a prominent issue in this whole discussion over nuclear plans that Iran may or may not have. This is what the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said on October 26 at that World Without Zionism conference.

He said, "Israel must be wiped off the map of the world, and god willing, with the force of god behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionists."

You understand why people in the West, especially here in the United States, are so concerned about your program, your nuclear program, given those kinds of direct threats against Israel, which happens to be a strong ally of the United States.

SOLTANIEH: I want to very briefly remind you that the policy of Islamic Republic of Iran and according to spirit and letter of our constitution is against any sort of school of thought or regime such as apartheid, Zionism, racism, and this is a matter of principle.

Therefore, what you are talking about as apartheid was disappeared and it could not be accepted by civilized world, this Zionism and aggression of racism is also condemned. [...]

BLITZER: Does your support for the removal of Zionism mean you want to see Israel destroyed?

SOLTANIEH: I have already explained to you and reflected to you the policy echoed by our supreme leader.

It means that if in that region, the divine religion followers of the Jews, Christians and Muslims, that all three are very respectful -- and we have Jews in Iran, which are peacefully living and they are represented in our parliament, they are fully respected -- if they come with the Palestinians, homeless Palestinians, to come and through following the democratic process will decide on a government and live in peace as they were living a thousand years of coexistence of these divine religions, Iran will support because we are looking for and we support peaceful settlement of the whole issue and peaceful coexistence of these divine religions in the Middle East. Let's hope for the peace.

BLITZER: But should there be a state of Israel?

SOLTANIEH: I think I've already answered to you. If Israel is a synonym and will give the indication of Zionism mentality, no.

But if you are going to conclude that we have said the people there have to be removed or we they have to be massacred or so, this is fabricated, unfortunate selective approach to what the mentality and policy of Islamic Republic of Iran is. I have to correct, and I did so.

So it seems that the statements by Ahmadinejad, or at the very least official Iranian policy, is much more nuanced than the Western media would have us believe. Furthermore, it is important to remember that Ahmadinejad does not control Iranian foreign policy. In an interesting article in the New York Review about Iran and the bomb, Christopher de Bellaigue has this to say:

Iran's enmity toward Israel is more nuanced than Ahmadinejad's statements suggest. The President's declarations that Israel should be "wiped off the map," and that the Holocaust is a "myth," understandably aroused fears that Iran might be considering an attack on Israel. But Iran's senior civilian and military officials have insisted that Iran will strike Israel only if Israel strikes first. More significantly, the President and supreme leader have both reiterated Iran's longstanding demand for a referendum on the status of Israel that would involve all Palestinian refugees. This official position would not seem to be consistent with an ambition to destroy Israel by force, least of all by using nuclear arms, which would endanger the very Palestinians whom the Iranians claim to be protecting. Several senior Iranian officials, including Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president who heads a powerful arbitration council in Tehran, have not disguised their irritation with the President's comments. But Ahmadinejad has benefited from the furor. By raising his prestige among hard-line Islamists around the world, the President has made it harder for his domestic opponents, who include Rafsanjani, to undermine him.

I will post the English translation later this week, once my Iranian colleagues have had the chance to get back to me.